


Compass

by missdeviant



Category: The Raven Boys
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-06
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 02:59:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/556127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missdeviant/pseuds/missdeviant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was one thing to see the women of 300 Fox Way bare-breasted in a pagan rite. It was something else entirely to do the same with boys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compass

**Author's Note:**

> For Keri, who enables most gleefully.

I. (East)

“This is the only way?” Blue asked. They were seated around the edges of Gansey’s giant bed, facing the center. Ronan was north, Blue east, Adam south, and Gansey west. 

“I’ve consulted four texts, and they all were rather, uh, explicit,” Gansey said. “That is, this is the easiest way to balance the energy between parties, which is to say, the least likely to result in one of us from being immolated in the process.” 

“Least likely?” Adam said, his eyebrows furrowing.

“Fire bad,” Ronan said.

“You’re sure it can be done anywhere?” Blue had warned them several times about the not-kissing rule, but the fact was, they were on a bed, which made things seem dangerous, somehow. Compared to the woods along the line, Monmouth Manufacturing felt less magical and more like a place where kids got together to play RPGs.

“Engaging the ley line during the ritual would be...unpredictable, at best.” 

It had taken a fair bit of Gansey’s persuasion to get the other three on board in the first place. Noah was excused, a consequence of his being non-corporeal. After Gansey had patiently, repeatedly explained that it was crucial that they begin the next step on equal footing, Ronan had been the first to agree. Blue took longer. She remembered St. Mark’s Eve and the fifteen ghosts that walked through her. She decided she preferred her energy intact. 

“I’m not breaking your energy, Jane,” Gansey had said. “We don’t even know with whom our imbalance lies. Think of it as shuffling the deck and re-dealing. All the cards are still there, but everyone is guaranteed an ace.” 

Adam was the holdout. He had been different since waking the ley line. When Ronan had helped him find a place to live, they had forged an uneasy truce that seemed to be holding. Whatever was happening there didn’t seem to involve Gansey at all, and Blue thought that this was the first time in a long time Gansey had been excluded from anything. It brought him ever closer to the shade she had seen in the churchyard. 

Ronan had been the one to convince Adam, finally. Or possibly threaten him with dismemberment if he didn’t participate. One never knew with Ronan. 

Gansey cleared his throat. “Shall we begin?”

“Wait,” said Adam. “Are we sure spontaneous human combustion is off the table?”

Gansey pressed his lips together. “The effects are supposed to depend on the personalities involved. It’s supposed to be entirely rooted in the subconscious, involving psychic rather than electrical or cellular transfer. The ritual mines your individual energy field and prompts needed action, if any, from there. The text was fairly clear that permanent physical damage was,” he paused. “--unlikely.” 

Adam’s brow furrowed. 

“And if it prompts me to kiss someone?” asked Blue for the twentieth time. 

“No one will be kissing you,” said Gansey, a little sadly. 

There were no further questions. 

The room was warm in the June sunlight slanting through the two windowed walls. The warmth was all the better because the ritual demanded skin, which was part of the reason Blue had balked in the first place. It was one thing to see the women of 300 Fox Way bare-breasted in a pagan rite. It was something else entirely to do the same with boys. 

As a compromise for her participation, she was allowed to keep her modesty intact with a bathing suit top. 

At Gansey’s command, they each removed their shirts and tossed them on the floor next to the bed. Gansey looked smooth and golden in the light. Adam’s chest and upper arms were a shade paler than the rest of him. Ronan tilted his head to his right, cracking his neck and causing his tattoo to undulate like a surfacing whale. 

It was the first time Blue had seen Ronan’s tattoo up close and fully exposed. The black lines seemed to lay on top of his skin, as if they were painted in oil. It was if all that was inside of Ronan was seeping out in a malignant pattern. 

“Here we go. Right palms down, left palms up.” They all extended their arms. It felt like a seance, Blue thought. Adam’s hand was smooth and dry on top of hers, his fingers resting lightly on her skin. Ronan’s palm made hers itch. 

“Lynch,” said Gansey, nodding to his left. Ronan closed his eyes and began chanting in Latin. The words flowed out of him with the easy quality of a priest who has being saying mass for fifty years. 

Blue closed her eyes too, letting the rhythm of the words wash over her. She didn’t understand what Ronan was saying, but the cadence of his voice was soothing. His touch stopped itching, and began to feel like an extension of her own arm. On her other side, Adam’s hand had turned ninety degrees, his fingers curling underneath hers. She let her hand relax and her fingers rose to grip his. 

She focused on her breath, in and out, in and out, as time ran in a current around them. Feelings like sparks danced through her wrists and rooted in her torso. She felt herself listing forward. Distantly, as if in a dream, Ronan’s hand moved up her arm, not breaking their point of contact but drawing her in until his hand circled the area just below her elbow. Rooting her in place. 

She thought she laughed, though whether she made noise or not she couldn’t ascertain. Her head was buzzing, bees in pursuit of cotton candy on a hot summer day. Images ground into her head, some recognizable, some new. Gansey in the churchyard, shoulders wet with rain; Adam on the ground in front of dusty gray siding; Ronan in the almost-dark with hands like talons, rocking back and forth on a wooden pew. 

After Blue didn’t know how long, Ronan stopped speaking. She peered through one eye at the circle. When they began they had been spread across the surface of the bed, just close enough so that their hands could touch. Now, they were near enough so that her legs, crossed underneath her, almost touched Adam and Ronan’s. On the other side of the circle Gansey’s chin drooped to his chest. His breathing seemed jagged, his chest rising and falling without rhythm. He was so close that Blue could have reached out and touched his face, but her arms were still engaged by the boys on either side of her. Ronan’s grip was a vice around her arm. His eyes were wide open. So were Adam’s. They were were locked in battle. 

“Don’t,” said Adam through clenched teeth. 

That was when Ronan broke the circle and lunged for Adam’s throat. 

Blue screamed as the connection was lost. Gansey’s head jerked upward. 

Ronan struck like a snake, knocking Adam to his back. His fingers made shackles around Adam’s wrists, his knees planted on either side of Adam’s narrow hips. 

“Parrish,” said Ronan, and dropped his mouth to Adam’s chest. Adam strained against his bonds, his chest suddenly flush with color. 

“Blue,” said Gansey evenly. “I need your hands. Give me your hands.” Blue held her trembling arms out like a crying child begging to be picked up. Gansey sandwiched his hands over hers. 

Adam’s breath was coming in gasps as Ronan’s mouth worked him over. “I don’t think - this isn’t working. This isn’t what is supposed to be happening,” he said even as he moaned. 

Ronan lifted his head, biting his lower lip. His eyes were full black and inky. The tattoo on his back seemed to be in motion. “Shut the fuck up,” he said, and ground his knee into Adam’s ribs. 

“Gansey,” said Blue. It was a question. Everything about her was peeling, her skin felt like it was coming off in strips. 

“It’s the transfer,” Gansey shuddered. His breaths came in gasps and bursts, his lungs seizing. 

“What do we do?” Tears were running down Blue’s face now. Her thighs were tingling, the vibration forcing its way through every pore. 

Listen, listen, the faraway trees roared. It was all so loud, even Adam’s deaf ear could hear it now. Adam could feel Ronan’s mouth, the leechlike press of it, and Blue could _feel_ him feeling it. 

She closed her eyes against the onslaught but it furled open like a map in her mind. She was Adam and she was Blue and she was Gansey all at once; to the north where there should have been Ronan there was only black, black, black. 

A mouth on her/Adam’s neck, teeth so sharp it was as though they had been filed into points. Stubble abrading the skin. Blunt thumbs hooking hipbones, hauling her/him closer. Fight and want all pooling together in their core. _None of you are my true love_ , Blue thought, trying to pull herself back to the surface, but at that moment she loved them all, she was spilling out love. A tidal wave of love crashing to drown them, a whirlpool of love drawing them to the deepest trenches. The air itself spoke of desire and doom, of prophecy and endings. 

Ronan’s fingers tripped up and down Adam’s torso as Adam strained against him. It was not as much an attempt at escape as an attempt to get closer. 

“Blue,” said Gansey.

Eyes, open.

Ronan’s mouth was on Adam’s clavicle now, marking dashed ovals with his teeth, and Adam was rising up to meet him. His nails seemed to find grooves in Ronan’s tattoo; blood welling up red beneath his fingers. Blue caught Gansey’s eyes and held them. He brought his hands to her face, their foreheads touching. 

“I can’t,” said Blue. Her hair was wild, full of static and motion. 

“I know, I know,” breathed Gansey. 

Panting and the hum of mouths and tongues against skin beneath the arch their bodies had created. All four of them touching, their limbs akimbo but still somehow aligned to their directions. 

The pads of Gansey’s fingers were stroking her cheek now. She inclined her head into them like a cat. 

“Will it stop?” Blue asked, knowing that she could endure this feeling without argument until she decayed in this bed. Even when the rest of her had evaporated into the ether and nothing but bones remained she would still be humming, transmitting. 

“It will stop,” said Gansey, and his despair poured into her. 

“Don’t. Stop,” said Adam, and Ronan didn’t. 

//

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be 1 of 4, until it wasn't. The other directions are still in my head, but ugh, broken.


End file.
